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Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is exploring plans to keep providing all British businesses with help for their energy bills once winter has passed, in what would be a break with current government policy to limit such aid to “vulnerable industries” after March. The potential change in the government’s support package for business, which several officials said

Sam Bankman-Fried has been accused of engineering “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history” as US prosecutors filed criminal charges against the founder of failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. In an indictment unsealed on Tuesday, the US Department of Justice charged Bankman-Fried with eight counts including conspiracy to commit wire fraud on customers and

Sam Bankman-Fried has been arrested in the Bahamas at the request of US government prosecutors who have filed criminal charges against the disgraced crypto entrepreneur. Bahamian attorney-general Ryan Pinder said the country’s police force had taken Bankman-Fried into custody after receiving “formal notification” from the US government that it had filed criminal charges and was

Credit Suisse provided an emergency $140mn loan to Greensill Capital based partly on invoices to companies who deny ever doing the business stated on the documents. The Swiss bank provided the loan in October 2020, less than five months before the collapse of Greensill, a supply chain finance firm that counted former UK prime minister

The White House’s chief energy adviser has described as “un-American” the refusal of US shale investors to ramp up drilling, even as Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine causes havoc on global oil and gas markets. US oil groups have been under pressure from Wall Street to funnel record profits back to investors this year, despite repeated

Jeremy Hunt has warned trade unions not to jeopardise Britain’s recovery, saying that high pay demands will hit the fight against inflation and harm the workers they are trying to protect. In an interview with the Financial Times, the UK chancellor did not deny that ministers had blocked a potential 10 per cent pay offer

UK ministers blocked a possible deal to call off this month’s rail strikes by preventing the industry from offering unions higher pay deals and adding tough new conditions at the last minute. Employers had planned to offer a 10 per cent pay rise over two years to the RMT union, but were blocked by the

The gulf between short- and long-term US borrowing costs has reached its widest point since 1981, in a sign investors expect the Federal Reserve to stay the course in its battle to tame inflation, even as recession worries mount. The two-year Treasury yield traded on Wednesday at 4.2 per cent, while the 10-year yield stood

Rishi Sunak is under pressure from Tory MPs to accelerate new strike-busting legislation, as Britain faces the biggest wave of industrial action since the tail-end of Margaret Thatcher’s government. More than 1mn days will be lost to strike action in December — the worst disruption in any month since July 1989 — based on unions’

The Treasury is finalising plans for a package of sweeping rules to regulate the cryptocurrency industry, including limits on foreign companies selling into the UK, provisions for how to deal with the collapse of companies and restrictions on the advertising of products. Ministers will shortly launch a consultation on the new regulatory regime, after the

The UK will fall into a year-long recession in 2023 as the “stagflation” combination of rising inflation, negative growth and plummeting business investment weighs on the economy, according to Britain’s largest business group. The CBI warned on Monday that gross domestic product would fall by 0.4 per cent in 2023, a downgrade from its previous

Alameda Research was allowed to exceed normal borrowing limits on the FTX exchange since its early days, Sam Bankman-Fried has said, in a concession that illustrates how the former billionaire’s trading shop enjoyed preferential treatment over clients years before the 2022 crypto crisis. In an interview with the Financial Times, the 30-year-old described the outsized

Russia has quietly amassed a fleet of more than 100 ageing tankers to help circumvent western restrictions on Russian oil sales following its invasion of Ukraine, according to shipping brokers and analysts. Shipping broker Braemar estimates Moscow, which relies heavily on foreign tankers to transport its crude, has added more than 100 ships this year,

US president Joe Biden said he is “prepared to speak with” Vladimir Putin about the war in Ukraine if Russia’s leader shows an interest in bringing the nine-month conflict to an end. “I am prepared to speak with Mr Putin if in fact there is an interest in him deciding he is looking for a

Elon Musk is under renewed pressure from the US and EU over his ownership of Twitter, as regulators clamp down on the billionaire’s push to transform the social network into a freewheeling haven of free speech. The European Commission on Wednesday threatened Musk with a ban unless Twitter abides by strict content moderation rules, as

Britain is poised to relax one of the biggest restrictions on the banking sector as part of “Big Bang 2.0”, the long promised liberalisation of post-Brexit financial services rules. The “ringfencing” of banks with retail and investment arms was introduced after the 2008 financial crash with the aim of reducing risk and preventing banking collapses.

Rishi Sunak on Monday warned that the so-called “golden era” of UK relations with China was over, but he signalled his determination to engage with Beijing as he stopped short of describing the superpower as a “threat”. The new prime minister, in an implicit criticism of the pro-China policies of former premier David Cameron, said

Protests in Shanghai escalated on Sunday evening as police struggled to disperse large crowds who gathered in the city, part of a nationwide movement that poses one of the most brazen challenges to the Chinese Communist party’s authority in decades. The unrest began on Saturday night and centred on a road named after the Chinese

Elon Musk’s tumultuous reign at Twitter has led to a damaging rift with top brands and marketers, with the social media company’s $5bn-a-year advertising business hit by tensions over content moderation and resources. Multiple top advertising agencies and media buyers told the Financial Times that nearly all of the big brands they represent have paused

Qatar has launched a review of its investments in London after the city’s transport authority this week banned the Gulf state’s advertisements on the UK capital’s buses, taxis and underground train system. The move by Transport for London was prompted by concerns about Qatar’s stance on LGBT+ rights and its treatment of migrant workers. It